Men's Basketball Headline

Tuesday March 11, 2014Gators Cap Undefeated SEC Season By Cleaning Up In Conference Awards

The Southeastern Conference announced its league awards,
voted on by the coaches, on Tuesday. Befitting an unprecedented 18-0 record in
SEC play, Florida hauled in an impressive amount of honors, including Billy
Donovan’s second consecutive SEC Coach of the Year win and SEC Player of
the Year accolades for senior point guard Scottie Wilbekin, the second
Gator in team history to claim the award.

Patric Young earned a league-record third SEC
Scholar-Athlete of the Year honor and was named Defensive Player of the Year.
In addition, Dorian Finney-Smith was named SEC Sixth Man of the Year for
his impressive play off the bench.

This marks the first time since the current SEC awards format
was introduced in 2004 that one team has had three different players honored
with league-wide individual awards, and it is just the second time that one
school has claimed five of the six major individual awards.

Casey Prather and Wilbekin both earned first-team
placement on the All-SEC squad, while Young garnered second-team recognition.
For the second consecutive season, both Wilbekin and Young made the SEC
All-Defensive Team.

“Any individual honor, to me, is just a reflection on your
team,” Donovan said at his weekly press conference on Monday. “Whatever awards
are given out or whatever honors are given out to any of our guys, I think they
would be the first one to say, ‘Without my teammates, this would not have been
possible.’ So if you have a goal, ‘I want to be Player of the Year,’ well, you
can't accomplish that by yourself. You have to have other guys to make that
happen. I think any individual honor, to me, is always a reflection of the
group. Everybody shares in that together.”

A testament to Donovan’s ability to develop and get the most
out of his players, the trio of Gator seniors on All-SEC teams combined to
start five games during their freshman season (2010-11, in which UF won the SEC
with a starting lineup that featured three seniors). Prather, Wilbekin and
Young combined to average 7.0 points per game as freshmen, a number that
currently sits at 38.4 points per game during their senior year, a 549 percent
scoring increase.

“For the guys that don’t leave early or are not afforded the
opportunity to leave early, they get better if they are willing to stay the
course on the process they have to go through,” Donovan said on Monday. “I just
want to create an environment here that whenever they are ready to go, they are
going to have our blessing. But if they do stay here, rest assured they will
get to be as good as they can possibly be once they leave here.”

After never receiving the SEC’s top coaching award during
his first 14 seasons at Florida, which included two national championship
seasons, Donovan has now won the award three of the past four seasons. He is
the first coach to win the award in consecutive seasons since Don DeVoe did so
at Tennessee in 1981 and ’82. Donovan joins DeVoe, C.M. Newton (Alabama, co-1975,
’76) and Adolph Rupp (Kentucky, 1968-72) as the only coaches to win the award
in back-to-back seasons.

Wilbekin becomes the second Gator to win SEC Player of the
Year honors, joining Chandler Parsons (2011). Wilbekin has averaged 12.9 points
and 3.9 assists per game while playing a team-high 33.7 minutes. His many
highlights include a buzzer-beating drive on the final play of regulation to
send Florida into overtime at Arkansas, a jumper as the shot clock expired in
the final minutes to help win at Auburn and a career-high 23 points in
Florida’s victory at Kentucky. Like Parsons, Wilbekin wins the SEC’s top honor
without leading his team in scoring, and he is currently ranks 25th in the SEC.
The first-team All-SEC honor marks his first by the coaches, receiving
Associated Press honorable mention in 2013.

Young is the first player to three-peat as SEC
Scholar-Athlete of the Year and brings that award to Gainesville for the sixth
time in its 11-year history (Lee Humphrey, 2006 and ’07; Ray Shipman, 2010). It
adds to his impressive list of classroom accomplishments that includes Academic
All-American recognition this season. He also becomes the second Gator to win
SEC Defensive Player of the Year accolades, joining Corey Brewer (co-winner in
2006). While Young does not put up gaudy blocked-shot numbers, his physical
low-post presence coupled with his ability to call pick-and-roll coverage and
effectively corral guards makes him one of the elite defenders in the country.
His second-team All-SEC honor is the second of his career, earning it in 2013,
as well.

Prather exploded into a major scoring threat this season and
would be a shoe-in for the SEC’s most-improved player if the award existed.
Having averaged 6.2 points as a junior, Prather is scoring 14.6 points
throughout his senior season and ranks sixth in the nation with a .625 field
goal percentage. This marks the first All-SEC honor of his career.

Finney-Smith provided a scoring and rebounding lift for the
Gators off the bench this season, averaging 9.4 points and a team-leading 6.9
boards. He led Florida in scoring three times during conference play, including
a career day with 22 points and 15 rebounds at Arkansas, his lone start of the
SEC season. The 6-foot-8 forward also ranks third on the team with 34
3-pointers made. He is the second Gator to win the award, joining Chris Richard
(2007).

Florida kicks off SEC Tournament action in Atlanta with a
quarterfinal game vs. Missouri or Texas A&M on Friday at 1 p.m.